GATT Will Explore Farm‐Trade Pacts

GENEVA, Feb. 25 — The world's major trading nations today made their first move to follow up the recent calls by the United States, the European Economic Community and Japan for a combined assault on harriers to international trade in 1973.

The move took the form of the establishment of a special working group to explore, under the auspices of the 80‐nation Genral Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, the possible “techniques and modalities” for negotiating accords liberalizing trade in agricultural products.

The decision to attempt to find the ways by which negotiators would exchange concessions on farm items was taken by GATT's 42‐member agricultural committee.

On Feb. 9 the United States and Japan issued a joint statement urging another “Kennedy round” type of multinational trade‐liberalization negotiations in 1973 within the GATT framework and covering both industrial and agricultural products.

Agriculture was largely neglected in the Kennedy‐round bargaining for tariff cuts successfully completed in 1967. Because of this, GATT established the agricultural committee with the mission of preparing the way for the inclusion of farm products in the next round of multinational trade negotiations.

The committee has been able to define and catalogue the complex issues raised by the protection most countries assure their farmers against foreign competition. But this leaves the still formidable problem of how to go about exchanging concessions on the varied and often intricate protectionist measures.

With membership open to all the GATT countries interested in agricultural trade, the new working group is to hold its first meeting at the end of next month. It is to complete its study by the end of the year, a GATT spokesman said.

The United States delegation to the GATT agriculture session was led by William R. Vearce, deputy to President Nixon's special representative for trade negotiations, William D. Eberle. Mr. Eberle has been spearheading the Administration's campaign for a new major round of trade bargaining in 1973.

Today's decision by the GATT committee “could be a constructive step,” a United States source said. “It gets into the pros and cons of the possible approaches to a negotiation.”

Meanwhile, 16 of the more affluent among the less‐developed nations completed today what has been called the miniKennedy round by formally signing an accord on an exchange of trade concessions.

At their full‐dress session last November the GATT countries waived their fair‐trade rules In favor of the accord so as to permit the less‐developed countries to exchange the concessions without extending these to all the GATT members.

The agreement for promoting trade among the poorer countries covers tariff reductions on some 300 items involving about $550‐million worth of exports.

We are continually improving the quality of our text archives. Please send feedback, error reports,
and suggestions to archive_feedback@nytimes.com.

A version of this archives appears in print on February 26, 1972, on Page 37 of the New York edition with the headline: GATT Will Explore Farm‐Trade Pacts. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe